All Alone

Mary and Jason sadly left yesterday afternoon and before that Michael left here on Sunday for Boston and Dallas. Now, I am back here, by myself, once again. In all honestly, I'd rather be left here alone then in Dallas while he was hopping over to Europe. So, I don't feel bad for being abandoned!

We had a really fun rest of the time with Mary and Jason. We took them to see a ton more stuff. I'm working on a little something to talk about their trip, but it'll be a few days till I can get it up. For now, I'll just wet your pallet with a few more pictures.

At Carlsberg Brewery - thats beer in my hand, not wine.

Tivoli

On our balcony eating Taco's Jason made for us. YUM. We ate out here often. It was nice.
Jason conquering a hill
Mary at Kronborg Slot (Hamlets Castle)

Enjoying the sun in a park in Roskilde

Replica of a Viking Ship at the Viking ship museum in Roskilde. Thats Mary and I in the picture

With an actual old viking shipOn the Train on the way home

We really really really had a great time with them here. It was fun to get to show them stuff that we love and to finally get to show someone our lives here.
They also say to all our friends and family in the states:
"EVERYONE COME VISIT NICHOLE AND MICHAEL IN DENMARK!"

So there it is, come see us!! Mary and Jason said so. As the first guests they also got the sun room named after them. From now on, it will be referred to as "The Partney Suite" If you come, you'll get something too. :)

Back in Texas

Hey, remember me? I use to blog here.
So where have I (we) been lately? Outside enjoying the Danish weather. The springtime is such a lovely time in Denmark. The beautiful colorful tulips and lilies all started and the trees are starting to turn green. For a while the highs were in the lower to mid 60's and we were able to walk around in shorts/skirts and short sleeve shirts. As long as the sun didn't disappear behind a cloud the weather had been perfect. The last few days we were there it started to turn cold again, but it forced us to not waste away days sitting outside drinking beer. For some reason if there is sun, there is beer flowing everywhere you look, so now, when we have a perfect sunny day, we both start to crave a nice cold Danish brew.

We left Denmark on Sunday. Woke up at the horribly early hour of 4am. I hopped in a cab and headed to the airport. My flights were both good. I landed at DFW at 6:30pm where Mary and Jason were waiting for me. They babysat me while we waited for Michael to land 4 hours later. I finally got to see Mary's new starbucks store. When we got there Mary told one of her employees behind the counter that I just came in from Denmark and to speak slowly to be because I didn't speak much English. The girl took her seriously, but the three of us started laughing before she could talk to me. Then we headed to the Olive Garden for dinner and Subway to pick something up for Michael when he got in and back to the airport to wait for Mr. Pate. Sorry did I say Mr. I meant Dr. (don't tell him I messed up) They did a great job keeping me awake though I was fading at several points. After Michael landed we drove in circles to find the front of the rental car place and finally got to the hotel at about midnight. We got up at 6 Monday morning and Michael put me in a Limousine Service to get me to the airport and Michael headed to a meeting at TI. I got to El Paso about 11:30AM and was exhausted. I was fine in the morning, but the plane ride sucked all the energy and life out of me for the entire day. My good pal Jeremy picked me up and took me to see my bro, to the store and then home where I was going to take a nap, but thinking about Michael at work with the exact amount of sleep as me in the past few days made me feel a bit guilty so I managed to stay awake all day and finally put my very tired head on my pillow at 9pm. Thank goodness I got a good night sleep last night.

So, to make that long story short, we both made it safe, sound and sleep deprived. It is a strange feeling being back in the states and knowing we don't have our home here. My ears had to get adjusted to hearing English everywhere. The first day of travelling I was surprised when people would automatically start speaking English to me. A few people I actually had to say, "I'm sorry can you repeat that" because it caught me so off guard. Isn't that ridiculous? I think I am better now though.

Finally ... A TRIP!!

So wanna know where we are going???? Get ready....

DALLAS TEXAS U.S.A. !!! hahaha

Not really what we had in mind, but it'll do for now. You might remember waaaaay back when almost a year ago actually, we bought tickets to see "Wicked" for this coming May. Well we have been wanting to see it for a couple years and have been anticipating seeing it for the past year, so we just HAVE to go. So our $175 dollar Wicked Tickets just turned into $675 dollar Wicked tickets. This all actually works out really really well for us. There is an "inner circle meeting" at TI the week before that Michael was asked to be at. So, because of that, his ticket/hotel room/ and rental car will all be paid for. It turns out his chip will be back from production around that time as well so he will be in Dallas to run some tests as well. For me the weekend before Wicked is "World Tai Chi and Qigong Day", So I will get to participate in that with Chris and Fayne. We can see Marys brand new Starbucks Store and I will probably hop over to El Paso for about 4 days. We will be in Dallas 2 whole weeks. Long time! I couldn't get over the fact that my rountrip ticket from Copenhagen to Dallas was only $500 AFTER taxes!!! That is INSANELY cheap. We already have my ticket. Michael has to book his through TI. We will be on different flights, but will get in and leave the same days. No, biggie for us though. But it will be funny to go to the airport together and leave separately and then meet back up across the world!

As for a real trip here in good ol Europe. We have a couple planned all out but because we will be heading to Dallas in a little over a month, escaping elsewhere before then seems a little tight. Maybe something will fall in our laps to work out perfectly. We shall see.

This Little Mexican is a Tortilla Making Machine!

Remember for Michaels birthday I was wanting to make some homemade tortillas but couldn't find shortening so bought a replacement ingredient? Well I finally gave it a shot and made them, and wow, they turned out pretty good, can hardly even tell its not shortening in them! I couldn't stop eating them so had to wrap them up in cling wrap and shove them in the freezer. So now, NO MORE STORE BOUGHT tortillas for us from here! Thats a reason to celebrate! (Store bought tortillas from here are especially not good and especially not authentic oh, and are expensive too!)

Things here are good. we had a little more snow this morning but nothing like last week. That stuff is all mostly melting due to rain, but there is still a lot of it on the ground. Yesterday I resigned myself from Danish Classes as well. I was starting to feel really guilty about still attending two more classes knowing I was going to quit. I felt like I was leading Marie, Our teacher, on.. :) We start brand new classes next Tuesday and we are both REALLY excited about them. The school is called, "Babel" and is conveniently located in the same building as TI!! How crazy! We will have our lessons in a private room in the lobby of the building. We get to decide when the classes are, and the day can change weekly as we want. Apparently its not only the language that they will be teaching us but also an integration into the culture (which we are pretty familiar with, but will be nice to learn a little more!) Also after taking a test the decided we don't need the full 90 lesson course but that we know enough to enter on the 60 lesson course! We will start with afternoon classes. It will work out perfectly as I will simply meet Michael up at work , we will have our lesson, hit the gym and come home :) Another great thing about this class, is that they will move on when they feel we are ready to and we don't have to worry about keeping up with other people in the class or getting bored by being stuck and not being able to move on. In the class we were in, everyone had different goals and reasons for being in the class and I think it was difficult for the teacher to incorporate all those goals into a single lesson. Thankfully Michael and I have the same goal making the classes more suited for our needs. And the BEST reason these are going to be so much better is they are providing coffee and tea for us! Its the little things that I appreciate the most... Mary can vouch for me on that one. Wow, I didn't mean to talk so much about the Danish classes! But I suppose saves me the trouble of doing so later!

Michael is still doing good. His side trip to Osaka was canceled (which is a good thing) because a design review was postponed at another company for tomorrow which he HAS to be at! Then he can FINALLY come home. During the days I feel like he is just at work. It's so nice to go to the gym during the days, but I can see why its hard for so many people to keep going to the gym without a workout partner... It is definitely NOT as much fun to go everyday alone. And at nights, It gets a little sad to only be cooking dinner for 1, or having to recork the wine at the end of the night because I have no one to help me finish it. *sigh*

Michael Update

Michael made it to Tokyo!! VERY long story short, flights were canceled, others delayed but in the end, he got there. He is still in one piece but was pretty exhausted. I think he is ready to come home! His time in Dallas went well. He stayed incredibly busy but had some time on Saturday to do some shopping for us. He stocked us up on TONS of stuff (some stuff we can get here, but it's SOOOO much cheaper to by in the states) We sent him with an extra large suitcase so he could get it all back. Tuesday - Thursday for Michael are going to be absolutely insane. He has a HUGE meeting everyday. On Thursday he has to be up EARLY EARLY, hop on a train to Osaka with his 4 bosses go to a big 'ol meeting in Osaka, hop back on the train and head back to Tokyo.

As for me, I'm still good :) I had planned on doing some stuff on Saturday, but the weather was still a mess so I just bunkered down in our place all weekend and was a bum. And I won't lie, I liked it. It gave me a chance to finally get all caught up on "Desperate Housewives" Thanks to I-Tunes!

The snow turned to rain and slowly it's starting to melt away. I'm hoping that the weather on Friday is good so Michael can get back here a-ok :)

Yup, thats it from here ...

Two Different Worlds

First, Michael made it safe and sound. About 5 minutes after I woke up at 7:30 this morning my phone rang and it was Michael telling me he just got to the hotel and was exhausted and was going to bed. It was just after midnight in Dallas. This morning I checked the weather in Dallas and was jealous to see that it said:

"79 and Sunny"

That is BASICALLY 80 degrees...we haven't seen weather above about 45 since we arrived on November 30th!

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looked like here today

This is directly behind the other side of our building. SHOPPING!!! :)

This is the most snow we have gotten since we got here. It is about 10:00 at night and last time I measured (with my trusty ruler with a picture of Einstein on it) I had almost 6 inches piled up on our table outside and 11 inches on the ground of the balcony, and it is still coming down hard and fast. I wonder what it will look like in the morning. I took a bunch of pictures to make a slide show for Michael to see what he was missing, so I am posting it here as well.

EDITED: It is now the next day and I came back and looked at the slideshow I posted and the picture quality was just really really bad and you couldn't see much, so I re-did it, took out the music and just uploaded some pictures. So go check them out! These are pictures of Lyngby and stuff we see daily....

Lyngby Sne

Good Luck Michael!

Ok, let me get this straight. My name changed back to Negrete AND my husband just left me in a foreign country by myself... Does that seems strange to anyone else besides me? haha.

Michael is on his way...well kinda. He left here this morning at 11:00am and is at the airport right now. His plane doesn't leave for another 3 hours (3:35) but we have a habit of getting to the airports ridiculously early. So, I guess he will be hanging out there for a while. I actually have a really busy day today,since it didn't really start till after he left at 11. I have some work to do around the house, do Danish homework, then go to the gym, come home take a shower, eat a quick dinner, then out the door to Danish class. Then back home and we usually go straight to bed when we get back. Maybe I won't even notice Michael isn't around today!! ok, thats pretty doubtful! ;) We realized a couple days ago that this will be the longest we have been apart since I went to Russia in 2001 for 2.5 weeks. We could hardly believe it. I've been getting a lot of what will you do while he is gone questions. Seems like most people think my life is going to come to a screeching halt while he is gone. I suppose with not working I portray myself to a lot of people that I am completely dependent on Michael, which I am in a way, but I wear a good mask to the incredibly independent and tough girl that I really am and always have been. I suppose thats why I never get bored doing what I do. :) I have a ton of stuff planned to do while he is gone. Several things its really hard to do with him around, which includes organizing the heck out of our place. It seems I can't get things meticulously organized the way I like, without creating a huge mess as I move along, and that's hard to do with two of us trying to move around in here. There are a couple places I want to go to that Michael doesn't have much interest in seeing so I'll probably hit up those places up as well. I have a Tai Chi lesson early next week and 4 Danish classes while Michael is gone. Also when Michael gets back we are starting private lessons here in Lyngby and will drop our other classes. I'll talk about those more later.

So, if you could for the next 10 days send out strength and recovery vibes to Michael we would both be grateful. :) When he left he told me he was really nervous about this trip and how his body and mind were going to handle it. He will hardly have a moment to come up for air between the all the traveling, preparations for big meetings and the meetings themselves. Plus he has a bad habit of forgetting to eat when I'm not around to remind him... that's never good.

My Little Traveler

Michael's all better, but before he got better, he got worse. He basically had an off and on fever from Tuesday night until last night. But today he has felt fine all day and its already 3:45. I think its safe to say, he is over whatever it was. We both have our fingers and toes crossed that I don't catch it too. When I catch something from him, I always get it much worse. So here's hoping I stay healthy.

Michael got his itinerary for his little whirlwind trip of the world. He will be leaving here Tuesday afternoon flying to Chicago to Dallas. He will leave Dallas on Sunday (he made it so he had an extra day there so he could do some shopping for us) and fly back to Chicago, then onto Tokyo. He will get to Tokyo Monday at about 3pm and will be there until noon on Friday. He will get back here on Friday afternoon. Turns out, while he is in Tokyo a second very big company wants to talk to him about a different chip that he worked on almost the entire time we were in Dallas.He isn't very happy about having to go all these places for such a short time, but hopefully it won't happen often. While he is gone he asked me to start looking into going somewhere at the end of March, even if just for an extended weekend. So I can spend some time figuring out where we need to/want to go for a few days. Any suggestions on a destination?? :)

A Sick Hubby on Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentines Day!!! :)

Michaels birthday went great. Well mostly. He had an up and down kinda day. Sometime during the middle of the day he said he felt like he was getting sick again. Achy, stuffy nose and sounded like what he just got over about a week ago, was starting to come back. We will get back to that in a moment. We are on spring break for Danish lessons this week so it was nice we didn't have class on his birthday and got to stay home.

For Michaels birthday he asked if I could make fajitas. Sure thing! So I spent the day running around to about a billion different grocery stores, and markets looking for all the ingredients I needed. I have found that Cilantro is near impossible to find here, and I didn't find it yesterday. I also was going to make homemade tortillas but couldn't find shortening. Michael asked some of the guys from work what it was called here and no one seemed to know what it was. They looked it up online and found that Denmark was the first to ban tans fats (which we knew) but all shortening is, is basically a big blob of trans fat. So outta luck. I was trying to use illegal ingredients. I did find a substitute, but I didn't have time at all once Michael got home to get the tortillas made too,so we had store bought ones. But I was able to manage to have enough time to make the guacamole and Spanish rice and of course the fajitas marinade from scratch.

Monday night we made a bunch of brownies. They seem to do things backwards here, but you know, when in Rome! Apparently it's customary to do your birthday like your in elementary school . You have to make the cake and bring it for everyone else instead of being giving a cake. We made some espresso brownies that Michael always loves so he could take them to work on Tuesday. We saved some so we had some to eat at night with ice cream. yum. Also on people birthdays they tend to decorate with the danish flag, so, I did too! I got the sun room all decked out for a party :)

Michael came home and I had to run out to get some chili powder (and had to go to two stores because the first one, didn't have any) because I used it all, came home and spent about 2 hours cooking while he laid on the couch, watched tv and tried to feel better. He started to and we opened a bottle of wine, ate and had fun.

I think when we pull down the shades in the sun room it makes it feel like we are in a tent like a party tent..

By the end of the evening Michael felt all better. We went to bed and the alarm went off at 5:00 (we were suppose to go to the gym this morning) Michael said he really didn't feel good again and that he felt really hot, but really cold at the same time. uh oh.. I was a little warm from the blankets so touched my neck first to feel my temp so when I felt his I had something to compare it too. I felt his chest, neck and head and I am surprised my hand didn't catch fire. He was burning up! And I could hover my hand above his body and feel the heat coming off of him. I know he had to have been at about 100 or slightly over. Unfortunately somewhere between Lubbock to Allen to Plano to Denmark we have misplaced our thermometer, and there is nothing open at that hour here so I couldn't go get one. He took some Tylenol and reset the alarm to 9 and said he would go to work late if at all. He woke up and felt surprisingly better. OK good! But I had a sneaking suspicion that the Tylenol was masking the fever and any pain. He took it slow this morning, but had a meeting with the other language school at 11:30 so had to leave for that. His skin felt cooler this morning right until he was getting ready to leave and then he was starting to get warm again (just about the time the Tylenol would have been wearing off) So he took some more and then out the door. He was going to come home early too. Poor thing. I feel bad for him.

Oh, also Michael found out he is heading to Dallas on Tuesday-Saturday then to Tokyo from there from Saturday-Tuesday then back here. He isn't looking forward to all the traveling and doing stuff he could do from here. The only thing he is excited for is to be present during a design review in Tokyo with a big wig from a big big Japanese corporation where he will be drilled about this product. I know he will do great, but he will be a MESS when he gets back home.. Jet lag in Dallas...jet lagged from Dallas and new Jet Lag in Tokyo to jet lagged from Tokyo to jet lagged again from Denmark. He isn't going to be a happy camper when he gets home.